


Five Times Natasha Lied to Clint, and the One Time He Lied to Her

by shaneequa



Category: The Avengers (2012)
Genre: 5+1 Things, Developing Relationship, F/M, Phil occasionally shows up, The Avengers will, later on though
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-01-16
Updated: 2013-02-06
Packaged: 2017-11-25 16:53:54
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 5,444
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/641070
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shaneequa/pseuds/shaneequa
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>(see Title) Natasha has only lied to Clint five times in their partnership. He's only lied to her once.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Death

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer: I don't own Marvel. The characters, cities or whatever else that is copyrighted and trademark that appears on any of my fanfiction. I'm only a poor college student who spent all her money on books.

He's been following her. From Madrid to Beijing. Pyongyang to Berlin. Fury had sent him on this long-term undercover mission for a year. They anticipated that was how long it was going to take to identify, confirm, target, and eliminate the elusive Black Widow.

It took him three months with the intel to her down. Her appearance always changing. She was alike a chameleon. He understood why other agents had a hard time keeping track of her. Why she was still alive after all the havoc she had caused in her short life. He had to give the Russians one for training her, molding her to be as close to perfect as a human can get.

She killed with such precise execution. Seduced with calculated movements. He never saw her take time off to just cherish the beauty of the city around her. He never saw her take a break aside from light sleeping where the footsteps of a maid or a child running in the hall would wake her up gun trained at the source.

He sat on rooftops watching her. Wondering if she smiled, if she laughed, if she felt regret after her kills, wondering if she knew what it felt like to be loved, or to love.

Clint's opportunity came 378 days after he was placed on the mission, briefed and set out. He tapped her phone line, intercepted messages from her bosses.

He sent up daily reports on the Black Widow, and Fury replied that the Widow's target was an enemy of SHIELD as well. Someone they have had on the hit list:

Antoine Shakrovick.

Before Natasha could make contact with the mark, Clint took it upon himself to interrogate and execute. Then, he took the place of Antoine Shakrovick.

He intercepted her messenger and replaced the dead man's pictures with his. After letting SHIELD collect the body, Clint took over the man's life.

He knew that Natasha was to make contact with him at a gala in a few days, therefore Clint read up on everything that created Antoine Shakrovick's life. How to act like the man that the Widow received a profile on so when the night of the gala came, he would be ready and the widow would be eliminated.

He really couldn't wait to get home to his warm bed.

So when he laid his eyes on her, in an olive green dress. Clint watched as she moved across the floor with a charming smile on her face, occasionally meeting his gaze on her peripheral vision. He was going to make this easy for her, make her think that her target has been lured into the web. When in all actually, it was she who would be trapped.

"Hello," he heard her familiar throaty voice in his left ear. He let the shiver that ran up his spine as a reaction, half for show and half, because there was a beautiful woman whose chest was pressed against him.

"And to you, as well," he replied, mimicking her motions, his mouth grazing her ear.

"Would you care to accompany a lonely woman tonight?" she asked him, offering a hand.

He smiled at her, "I find that hard to believe miss..."

"Beatrice," she replied softly. "Beatrice Wynne."

"Antoine Shakrovick," he replied, letting himself adapt and broadcast the heavy Russian accent he often practiced. "It would be my pleasure to accompany you tonight."

"Pleasure's all mine," she replied with a coy smile leading him to the dance floor.

They danced in the middle of the floor, their bodies swaying to the melody that the band played. Sometimes, Clint wished that they would play a livelier tune, but he knew it wasn't fit. Not with the guests, the formal attire that everyone wore, and the venue that fancy events like that were hosted at. Still, he couldn't help but miss the country club that he frequented in America. Though, he couldn't complain, he never got the chance to dance with a girl as beautiful as the one who currently filled his arms.

"You are beautiful," he told her, slipping back into the persona of Antoine Shakrovick.

"Thank you," she replied softly, shyly. She glanced up at him with big green eyes, pausing in her steps. She leaned up and pressed herself against him, her mouth mere inches from him. "Would you like to get out of here Mister Shakrovick?"

Clint smiled down at her. Finally. "Yes."

Clint let himself be led by the Widow until they reached the elevator. "Would you rather go up to my suite? I have the penthouse."

To that, she smiled adoringly at him and gave him a chaste kiss on his mouth, moving down to his jaw and neck.

Clint had to keep himself in check, the Black Widow was not the world's most successful assassin for nothing. He read her file, she was a master in the art of seduction by age fourteen.

It seemed like an eternity to him until the elevator bell rang, signaling that they have arrived on the top floor of the five star hotel. She peeled herself off of him gracefully as they walked to the door of Penthouse 2 where he was staying.

"Would you like some help finding your key?" she offered him innocently, getting a feel in his pants pocket before producing the keycard.

Clint gulped. "Thank you."

She placed her lips against his as she slipped the keycard in the slot and opened the door to the expansive suite.

She cracked an eye open, looking for exits (window, vents, door) while he dragged her into an attached room (where he kept his bow and arrow, along with a few guns), their lips and hips seemingly attached.

He walked her to the bed, lifting her up to straddle his waist before plopping her down to the bed. He crawled their bodies up to the headboard where he then reached to his side for zip ties, tying her securely on the bed before stepping away from her.

"Is this how you would like to take me, Mister Shakrovick?"

He smiled down at her, reaching for his Glock tucked under his boot. "Well I don't usually like to kill with a gun; and it's Barton."

Recognition filled her face as she struggled through the seemingly ordinary set of zip ties that he used on her. As if on their own, the zip ties tightened around her wrist and seemed to multiply in width.

He smiled. "Stark Tech. It's escape proof."

She rolled her eyes at him. "Kill me now then."

"I will, once you answer my questions," he replied with a shake of his head, his weapon still trained at her. His eyes were watching every movement she made. Every little flick of her wrist that could show him that she was escaping the bonds which he tied her to. While it was true that nobody has escape the Stark Tech bonds, he wouldn't be surprised if the Black Widow was able to the first one to do it.

"Then ask your questions so that we can be done with this!"

He huffed, "Fine."

"What is your name?"

"Natalia Aliaonova Romanova."

"Who trained you?"

"The Red Room."

"What is your kill count?"

She turned away from him not meeting his eyes.

"What is your kill count?" He repeated, gently this time as to not scare her. He never thought that he would worry about scaring the infamous Black Widow but her reaction showed him more than any of the files that they had on her.

"My ledger, it's gushing blood," she whispered. "I... I don't know my count. They take my memories away."

"They do what?"

"Take my memories away," she said, her voice stronger than before but with a bit of emotion that Clint never expected from her. "They re-program me. Humans, no matter how they are trained, will mourn and will feel guilty. I'm not a robot... I have to be re-programmed so that I will keep obeying. That I can keep killing."

He shook his head. It's a trap, Barton. This was a woman who was trained to deceive. To get out of any situation. That's how three other agents were pronounced dead after Fury sent them to track the Widow and take her out.

"You ready to die, Widow?" he asked her, determined to get it over with before she royally played with his head.

Her eyes met his. "I have been waiting for death."

Clint shook his head. "Nobody waits for death. They just wait to stop living."

"Then that's what I am," she stated. "Take the shot, you coward."

"No."

"Take the shot!"

"Give me a reason to."

"I want to die!" she screamed at him tugging at her bonds, her eyes staring at his angrily.

He walked closer to where she was tied up on the bed, gun trained between her eyes. It would be quick, painless for her. She wouldn't even know what happened.

But he would.

"Tell me the truth, Romanova. Are you afraid of dying?"

"No."

Liar! His brain screamed at him.

"A part of you must be," he stated turning off the safety. His hands steadily aiming at her.

"No part of me is afraid of death."

"You're not scared of what's after? Heaven? Hell?"

"There is no other place for people like me besides hell."

"Burning hot lava. Large flames. You aren't afraid of it?"

"I am Natalia Romanova. I am not afraid of anything."

He sighed shaking his head. He aimed to his side and pressed the trigger of the gun. The shot echoed throughout the room. He looked down at Natalia's face. Her eyes shut, a tear falling down her face.

She was afraid.

But she was also relieved.

In a split second, Clint decided to put down his gun, forgoing the safety. He walked up to her, getting closer, before injecting a sedative in her neck. Her eyes remained shut, and another tear fell.

"You only welcome death because you're afraid of living," he whispered to her unconscious form before stepping away and dialing Coulson's number.

"Barton, tell me you've neutralized the threat."

"Well, sir. That would be a lie."


	2. Family

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> see chapter one for disclaimers.

It took a while for her to finally figure out her way around SHEILD. She had a certain aloofness about her that other agents, and other people who worked there didn't want to go near. No matter how many times they talked about her, no matter how many dirty looks they sent her, Natasha Romanoff (she Americanized her name after deflecting, as if that has anything to do with her royalties) always walked with her head held high.

The only person who saw her at her lowest moments was the one man who she called a coward for not being able to pull the trigger. Clint Barton.

She spent late nights in her bed, looking up at the plain white ceiling, wondering why he didn't kill her. She told him that she wanted to die. Practically begged the man to put a bullet through her skull and end it all. But he didn't. When she asked him about it, all he would say was that she needed to right her wrongs. Take some of the red out of her ledger before she can leave the world.

For months he trained with her, letting her beat the living daylights out of him while they sparred, and eventually as he learned her moves, he was able to hold his own. He didn't seem like the other men, she could run around with her shirt off, and while she could feel his stare, his gaze never lingered too long. He always kept eye contact.

She had never thought in her years spent working with men that she there was, in fact, still gentlemen in the world.

"Hey, Romanoff!" Clint's voice took her out of the daze that she was in. As a punishment for Clint, and a trial run for her, they have been assigned to their twenty-seventh consecutive surveillance mission; neither agents were required to fire a gun. Just gather intel and go. it's a job that undermines their skill-set but while she complained about the lack of excitement, Clint took his punishment in stride.

"What do you want, Barton?"

"Nothing," he shrugged. "Just makin' sure that you're still with me."

She scoffed, "as if I could get away from you."

"I'll take that as a compliment," he stated with a smile on his face. "How many people can honestly say that they've tracked you for more than a week. You're a freakin' ghost sometimes, Romanoff."

She shook her head, letting the small conversation die down. She was never one for talking during a surveillance op, mostly because of the fact that she never had a partner before.

Clint on the other hand, was very American, in the way that he wanted to fill silences with conversation. Grant it, he was quiet when he needed to be. Silent as she was when he was on a rooftop, counting each inhale and exhale. But in that cramped little apartment that SHEILD rented for them, he couldn't help but fill the silences.

x

_"What's your favorite kind of music?"_

_"Music?"_

_"You know, like Classical - Beethoven. Or... 80's Rock? Pop? R and B?"_

_"The Nutcracker."_

x

_"Did you have a pet growing up?"_

_"I was the pet."_

_"Oh. I had a dog, when I was about five. His name was Scruffy."_

x

_"How old were you when you had your first kiss?"_

_"I don't remember."_

x

_"What's your favorite color?"_

_"White."_

x

_"Do you like your name, 'Natalia Romanova'?"_

_"It's Natasha Romanov."_

_"But doesn't that mean, in Russia, that you're a man. I mean my Russian's a little rusty but-"_

_"I'm not Russian. Not anymore."_

x

He looked at her with a smile on his face. "You know that I was in a circus?"

She chuckled at the thought. "Oh really? Tell me more, Barton."

"Well I wore this... this tight purple outfit," he started with a grimace. She looked back at him, her green eyes bright and filled with amusement. "It wasn't my costume of choice, okay? Besides I didn't figure out that purple wasn't - anyway. I started off as a cleaning and tickets boy. Barney he -"

"Who's Barney?"

"Uh. Oh, Barney's my brother."

Natasha turned to him surprised. She has never heard Clint mention a brother before. She always figured he was like her: alone.

"I always thought you were an orphan."

"I am," Clint stated. "My parents... they died when I was young. Barney was seventeen, he was a decade older than me. When he turned eighteen, he took me with him to get out of the orphanage. He told me that he was going to give us something better than being shuffled from one home to another where people pretended to want us, but they really didn't."

She didn't respond, so Clint continued.

"Anyway, so Barney was there. He had a good sense of balance. He started off like me, but Trickshot - that's my mentor -he offered Barney to start an act. He taught Barney to shoot a bow and arrow. Then Barney taught me."

"He must have been one hell of a brother."

He shrugged, dropping the subject.

That was fine for her, she didn't need the white noise.

Sometimes she wished that she got to see what her family was like. Her mother with her long red hair, sparkling blue eyes, and the grace she had as she danced around the house. Her father with his mustache that she always giggled when he left a kiss on her temple. Her sister, an older sister, who tried to take her under her wing, teaching her how to write and read, while she was being taught.

x

_"Tali! You do it wrong!" her older sister, what was her name again? would exclaim as young Natalia slipped on pink ballet shoes two sizes too big and spun around the room._

_"You no know how to do it right! I do it right!"_

_"Nuh-uh! I takes lessons!"_

_"I watch mama."_

x

But no, the few memories she had of her family, she didn't even know was real, or just another memory created in a lab by Red Room scientists who had too much time and imagination in their hands.

x

_"Where am I?" Natalia asked the girl on the bunk next to her. She looked similar to her sister._

_"The Room."_

_"Uh... Where's mama and papa?"_

_"Dead."_

x

She shook her head, ridding herself of her memories and picked up the binoculars that she set beside her, looking out at their mark.

"How old were you?" Clint asked her after a moment. "When you ... When the Room took you in?"

Natasha shrugged. "I don't remember."

"Did you have brothers or sisters?"

"I don't know."

"Do you remember your family?"

"No."

And it was the truth, _sort of_.


	3. Budapest

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Budapest, Hungary

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Disclaimer is in Chapter 1. Hope you guys like it, feedback's always welcome!

_2356 CET (Central European Time)  
Göd, Hungary_

They've been partnered for years and while Clint has never really throughout about it, as if they had been partners since the beginning of time, Natasha did. She counted the days, in tick marks on the empty white wall of her room in HQ. It has been four years, to the day, that he didn't kill her. Four years since he single handedly turned her life upside down.

The Red Room fed into the lie that one crafty archer was able to shoot an arrow into the safe house that the Black Widow was using, her body burning down the building before she could escape. It was SHEILD's way of putting the Red Room off her scent as she defected. She wouldn't have to watch her back for Russians, because she sure as hell was watching her back in SHEILD facilities.

But she didn't really have to, again, because of one crafty archer who constantly watched her back.

Never before had she trusted someone so implicitly with her life. In fact, to be honest, the Room taught her that she couldn't trust anyone. It was a rule that she had followed to a tee, until that damn archer broke down all the barriers she had.

That damn archer who was now laying in the street next to her, bleeding to death because the _dumb fuck_ took not one, not two, but three bullets for her.

 _0800 CET_  
District XV  
Budapest, Hungary

"Clinton Barton!" Natasha exclaimed pounding on the door of the bathroom. While her ex-Delta Force partner usually took three minutes or less showering and getting ready, that morning, he was taking twice as long. They were on a tight schedule, the truck that carried packages that SHEILD was interested in was going to leave at 1450, and they still needed to _plant her_ in the operation.

By plant, what SHEILD actually wants is for her to seduce the truck driver. She was going to be a poor college student bag packing across Europe and lost her way. If the truck driver could _kindly_ bring her to her next checkpoint she would forever be grateful and do anything for him.

Natasha often rolled her eyes at the sappy, cliché, cover stories that SHEILD came up with. At least the Red Room was a little more creative (read: go in, get what you need, kill, get out). She didn't even get to kill on the assignment. It was supposed to mostly be intel gathering and diversion. Clint was to drive a truck, identical to the one she was going to ride in with empty cargo. All she had to do was determine the drop off point for the truck, and make sure that the actual cargo wouldn't get there.

Simple enough. That is, if her partner ever got his ass out of the bathroom.

"Barton! I swear, I will break down this door!"

"Hold your horses, Tasha," his muffled reply came from behind the door. He played around with the door knob before opening it, showing Natasha his disguise. He placed contacts over his usually distinguished stormy eyes, a mustache, and gelled the wig that SHEILD provided him with. "How do I look?"

"Beautiful. Now get out, it's my turn."

Clint sighed. "You have twenty minutes to get ready!"

"Thank you for the reminder, Barton!"

She slammed the door shut in his face. He smirked at the door before walking to the bed to prepare the gear.

 _1254 CET_  
District XV  
Budapest, Hungary

"Mission is a go," Coulson's voice rang through their earpieces. This time, their ear pieces weren't as subtle as they usually are. Natasha had on pink earphones while Clint had on a Bluetooth device that most drivers have in order to practice "safe driving." He doubted that the people they were dealing with worried about safety, but it was SHEILD's (what he and Natasha called) costume department.

"Copy."

"Copy."

"Spider to Hawk, I'm in position."

"Hawk to Spider, same."

 _1400 CET_  
District XV  
Budapest, Hungary

"So, where are you from?" Natasha asked the truck driver, in perfect Hungarian. She turned to face the window, rolling her eyes as the truck driver stared at her a little longer than he needed to.

"Around."

_"I bet he gets around."_

"Really? I have never heard of such place."

_"It's coz you live like a nun, Tasha."_

"You are a tourist, are you not? You wouldn't have heard of it."

"So, where are you taking me?" she asked enticingly. "I just... I need to get to the train station and..."

"Well we have to make a stop first."

She raised an eyebrow, the perfect actress, "oh, anywhere exciting?"

"Just around, you know. God."

"God?"

The truck driver rolled his big dark eyes, "You are a tourist. You wouldn't have heard of it."

_"Copy."_

"Oh, it's a city, isn't it? North of Budapest?"

_"Thanks."_

_1420 CET_  
District XV  
Budapest, Hungary

"Widow, please tell me that truck coming in is you," Hawkeye stated as he parked the truck in the intersection that she provided after interrogating and killing the driver.

"Negative, Hawk. I am still at District 15," she replied, static coming through the coms more than their chatter. "Your com working okay?"

Nothing.

_Shit._

Natasha started up the truck in Clint's direction.

_1425  CET  
God, Hungary_

"Hello? Widow, report. Widow?" Clint asked tapping the com. link in his ear. "Don't fuck with me like this, Tasha."

"It seems as though, the archer will bring us to our missing Widow," a voice muttered in his ear. causing Clint to turn sharply in the direction of the voice. The barrel of a gun greeting him.

Clint looked up at the owner of the gun.

 _Ivan Petrovich_.

"Turn his coms back on," he ordered one of the men who climbed into the trunk of the truck. "You tell Natalia that the mission is a go, and that she has to pick you up."

"No," Clint spat out at him.

"You do it, Hawkeye," Ivan ordered pushing the barrel further up Clint's temple. "You wouldn't want us to kill her, would you?"

"You wouldn't kill her as much as I would! She's your most prized possession."

Ivan chuckled. "She told you that? Is that what lies she told you?"

"You've proven it, making all this bullshit. If she wasn't that important to you, you would just let her go. You wouldn't go through all this trouble to get her back. "

"Wrong. The Red Room does not like loose ends."

"She's not a loose end," he spat.

Ivan cocked his gun and aimed it at Clint's knee, effectively shooting his left one making him crumble. He then picked up Clint's com and handed it to one of his men. "Turn it on, and give it back to me. No doubt the Widow will come for him."

Natasha's voice entered the com in Ivan's ear. "Hawkeye? Clint? Clint, do you read me?"

Ivan grinned, watching as his men kicked and punched their new toy. "Natalia, it has been a while."

"Who is this?"

"You would forget the voice of the man who took care of you? Who gave you everything you have ever wanted?"

"Ivan."

"Natalia," he smirked. "I understand it is Natasha now, is it not?"

"What do you want? Where is Hawkeye?"

"Do not worry about him, my pet. He is... how do you say? In better hands? Although if you do not come to me, he will be dead."

"Where are you?"

"You know where I am."

_1525 CET  
God, Hungary_

Natasha was shaken. Though she had no idea why. She spent most of her days thinking of creative ways to shut her partner up, and when she wasn't she was trying to hide from him while he insisted on "Americanizing" her.

Yet, the damned archer, with his stormy gray eyes and calloused hands have managed to slip into her, enough for her to care about his safety.

Enough for her to go into the damn trunk of the truck and see Ivan once again.

Natasha parked the truck next to what she knew was Clint. She checked her person ensuring that she had at least one Glock and three knives that Ivan would not be able to detect in a search before proceeding to get out of the car.

The sun was setting, and maybe to someone who was just passing by  it would look crazy to see two armed men dressed in all black guarding the back of what looks like a delivery truck but politics and people in Hungary have never been at peace, and maybe for them this seemed like a common occurrence.

She saw one of the guards press his com to tell Ivan that she arrived. She marched past the guards, jumping gracefully into the back of the truck where she was met with a barrel in front of her face making her pause as hands were all over her body taking off the weapons which she had strategically let them. She scanned the room, ignoring the barrel in front of her, she knew that if they wanted her dead, they would have already killed her. She was too valuable an asset to them for them; they wouldn't dare.

In the corner of her eye, she found what she was looking for. A body slumped against the right corner of the little convex, blood oozing out of him.

"We have stripped her of all her weapons," one of Ivan's man stated.

The barrel that was directed between her eyes was lowered, replaced with an even more vile image of Ivan.

"How are you doing, my pet?"

"Well until I saw your ugly mug," Natasha spat out, ensuring that Clint's chest was still rising and falling through her peripheral vision. She wouldn't give Ivan the satisfaction of knowing that she had developed care for her partner. 

"You have always been ungrateful, Natalia," Ivan sighed shaking his head. "I would have been.. .less.. what do you Americans call it? 'Pissed.' had you joined another country. But AMERICA? The one country that --"

Natasha yawned. "Cut to the point."

 _Don't have much time_ , Clint signed shakily with his fingers.

Ivan smiled at her walking up to a makeshift table with a black suitcase. He pulled out a couple of syringes. "You will come back to us, Natalia. There is no question about that."

"Or so you say."

"I say," he replied walking over to her tapping the syringes he had in his hand. "I always give you what you want, isn't that right, my pet? And what it is you want is this... Hawkeye."

Ivan kicked Clint before bending down and grabbing his shoulder. Injecting all three syringes that he hand in his hand into Clint's exposed neck. Clint thrashed around, his voice coming out hoarse as he screamed in pain.

"He shall be yours."

"What did you to do to him?"

"You come back, and I will give you the cure."

Natasha stood there frozen. It was her freedom or Clint's life. _How about both?_ With her reflexes, she was able to pull out the knife she stowed on her body, hidden in the search, throwing it into Ivan's throat and effectively killing him.

She ran over to Clint, placing the back of her hand against his forehead to read his temperature. 'You're gonna be okay."

Taking Ivan's gun from his back pocket, and ensuring that it was loaded, Natasha walked outside, killing the two guards. The three men who had been inside with Ivan were in the truck that she hijacked. She blew one of the tires of the truck, before running to the driver’s side of the truck that she was in, pressing the on the gas and hoping beyond hope that the _damn_ acceleration of the truck would go faster.

"Mother Hen, this is Widow. Requesting extraction."

"Widow, this is Mother. Please confirm."

"I _need_  that fucking extraction, Coulson. He's dying!"

"16 minutes, Budapest District II," Coulson's voice patched through the other line.

"Non-ambulatory, inject with... I don't know, but it wasn't good," Natasha's voice broke over the communication lines.

"Just get him there, Romanoff."

"Copy."

 _1541_  
District III  
 Budapest, Hungary

"Romanoff, we're at the extraction site, where the hell are you?" Coulson’s voice piped up on the comm as Natasha weaved the giant truck through the streets of Budapest. If it were up to her, she would have picked a more subtle car. A white sedan, maybe. Something that would blend in. It didn't bode well with her that they could be so easily spotted.

"ETA 3 minutes," she replied. "This thing doesn't _fucking_ go over 50 miles per hour."

"SitRep on Barton?"

"I.. I don't know, he's in the convex of this thing."

Natasha must have been out of it, because the next thing she knows, a shrapnel from the blasted window hits her shoulder causing her to duck down.

"Mother Hen, this is Widow. We have hostiles attacking from the left. Can you provide support?"

"Negative, Widow. The area is too populated, you have to get out of there your own."

"Give me something, Coulson!"

"We have eyes on you, you get two blocks North and we can get you that support, no closer though. There is a religious building near you right now, and we can't afford to blow up --"

Natasha blocked him out of her ear, as she tried to assess the situation. There was no glass protecting her, all the glass were shattered all over the front seats of the car. Her right shoulder had a bullet in it, and Clint was at the back of the truck, no protection given.  She drove through the streets blindly, hoping that she wouldn't need anything.

_Two blocks, Natasha._

"Coulson you better be there when I cross this street," Natasha muttered into her com. She saw from the corner of her eye, a sniper perched on the rooftop and a man, manning a machine gun on the adjacent rooftop. All trained on the stupid, giant, white truck that she was driving.

"We have eyes on you, Romanoff, just cross this damn street."

Natasha pressed her foot heavily on the gas pedal of the truck, glancing up as she crossed the second block.

"You are in the clear, Romanoff, proceed to extraction point. We have you from here."

Behind her, Natasha could hear the gun shots, and could feel the heat of an explosion.

 _Please let Clint be alright_.

As soon as Natasha rounded the block to the extraction point. She jumped out of the driver's seat, careless of the glass that embed her skin. She pulled herself into the back of the truck to check on her partner, tripping over Ivan's lifeless body.

"Clint?"

"Tasha?" he groaned. his eyes flickered open, taking in her bleeding body. "You hurt, Tash."

The SHEILD medical agents came running into the back of the truck with their equipment, running over to Natasha first. As protocol, they were to treat the person who had the better chance of surviving and from the way the partners looked, Clint was the one who wasn't going to make it.

"You take him, you take him first," Natasha instructed them with a glare. She looked down at Clint who shook his head, weakly pushing away the hands of the medic who was trying to look him over.

"Tasha first," he muttered swatting them.

"Hey, I'll be okay," she said to him, running her hands through his hair.

"Not your fault, kay?" Clint muttered relaxing to her touch. The medics pulled him up while the others laid the stretcher under him. "Promise, you... not blame yourself."

"I promise."

 _Lie_.


End file.
